And the Cardinal Hits the Window
by Teller1789
Summary: Re-uploaded. Blaine and Kurt dance around each other. And then they don't. And then it's too late to matter. Blaine/Kurt. Character death.


Warning: Character death

And the Cardinal Hits the Window

Based on _Casimir Pulaski Day_ by Sufjan Stevens

They dance around each other.

Kurt is more broken than he first realized. Blaine doesn't blame Kurt. As they talk and know each other, the pieces of Kurt's life come together. He marvels at Kurt. This boy is incredible and so much more than Blaine can fix.

For his own part, Blaine knows what he's doing is wrong. Kurt is cute. Kurt has really nice eyes. Kurt is his chance to redeem everything he doesn't like about himself. It's vicarious and manipulative and Blaine is a horrible mentor. It's worse than that. He's still a coward.

Kurt calls him. The bully kissed him.

Blaine realizes he's reached an important place. This matters, this is what _will_ matter. Blaine still can't do it. Running away has become such a habit.

"Blaine." Kurt says his name over the phone, high and feminine and still so much stronger than Blaine ever was.

Kurt is asking so much. Blaine is nobody's savior.

He remembers how beautiful Kurt looked, falling apart right in front of him. Eyes silver-blue and tears clumped in his thick, thick eyelashes. _Unreal_.

"Okay," Blaine says.

He isn't sure what's happening.

When he left, Blaine knew he'd never go back for anybody.

"I'll be there.

Kurt shows up in his geometry class wearing a Dalton Blazer with a matching purple eye and red-scabbed lip.

Blaine excuses himself and sits in an empty classroom the entire period. He draws squiggles on an extra sheet of notebook paper and bears down so hard the lead breaks.

After class, Kurt finds him anyway.

"It's okay." He says. His voice is soft and high, like always, but there's a new frailty to it. The words sag in the middle, as if speaking them presses too hard on Kurt's tongue, and even that extra hurt is too much. Too much after everything else.

Blaine feels dirty.

He feels like he did when he was five and broke his mom's favorite glass figurine.

It had been a little blue bird, delicately crafted and cut. She'd bought it in Paris.

Blaine liked to hold it up to the window and watch the way the sun caught at its edged surface, reflecting the light back onto the carpet.

And then he'd dropped it.

Blaine looks at Kurt's face.

_Blue, blue, blue. Black and blue_.

"It's okay." Kurt says again.

Blaine gets up. He wants to touch Kurt. He wants to have a hold of whatever Kurt is.

When Blaine reaches out, Kurt flinches away.

"Please." Kurt says and begins to sing.

Blaine sits down and listens.

He realizes that he didn't understand before. Not really.

Kurt's voice is stunning. And sweetly broken and hurt. And still so, so achingly pure.

Blaine feels safe, reassured.

He also feels humbled. He should have known. He isn't enough.

Nothing, _nobody_ could break this beautiful thing inside of Kurt.

Blaine notices. It's a gradual thing.

He is confused and worried. At first, he thinks its depression.

Then Burt calls.

Blaine still isn't officially Kurt's boyfriend. They haven't kissed. Blaine has only been over a few times. Once for a family dinner. Burt likes him. Burt knows that he likes Kurt. He doesn't know what Burt thinks about that.

So. Blaine is surprised.

"We went to the doctor today." Burt says. Blaine knows that Burt isn't a man who cries. Burt is gruff and charmingly rough around the edges and he's crying, now. It's not big or dramatic or even really that profound. It just… is. Blaine can hear the crackle-hitch in his voice. His breathing is irregular over the phone, but his words are clear and composed.

Blaine knows that whatever comes next is bigger than he's prepared to deal with. It restarts. He wants to run.

"It's cancer." Burt says. "Bone cancer. Same thing that took Kris." Kurt has never talked about his mom. Blaine still knows who she is.

"I-" Blaine starts. He can't think around it.

_Blue. _

"Come see him." It's not a request. Blaine says nothing. He can't, he can't, he can't. He's eighteen. He's leaving for college in eight months. Soon he'll be gone, gone. Everything he's left behind won't matter.

He can't risk this.

Burt drives to Westerville to get him.

Kurt is downstairs. He's reading something. Blaine watches from the top of the landing. Kurt looks pale and tiny and dead in the light from the lamp.

"Hey." He calls. Kurt turns around. He's been crying. There are bags under his eyes, sunken and deeper than fatigue. Bone-weary, bone deep. Blaine feels like an idiot. Depression, he'd thought.

Blaine has no idea what he's doing. He's never felt so out of control in his life. He goes up to Kurt and shoves a decorative bag into his hands.

Kurt stares and smiles. It's lifeless and unhappy and Blaine really can't do this.

"They're supposed to make people better." He sounds like a child, no longer elegant or dapper. Just really, really lost.

Kurt pokes around in the bag. His small hands brush across his gifts. He looks down. Goldenrod and a 4-stone. Kurt laughs.

"How incredibly sensitive."

He doesn't sound mad. Just… disbelieving And maybe a little fire, a faint dapple of sarcasm. Flirty and witty and Blaine thinks maybe it's not so bad.

"I don't know what else to do." It's honest. Maybe the truest thing Blaine has ever said.

"Don't run away from this." Kurt says.

Blaine can't breathe, all at once. How could Kurt possibly…?

He looks Kurt in the eyes. Right, of course.

He leans in and kisses Kurt softly. Kurt moans and Blaine feels like a sick bastard at the heat that curls up in his stomach.

Blaine tastes salt on his tongue.

"What?" Blaine asks. He's only eighteen. He doesn't understand this.

"It's not fair." Kurt says. "I finally get _you_," Blaine flinches. Kurt says _that_ like it's the best thing in the world.

"And now I have to… leave."

_No_. Blaine decides. _No_. He really can't do this. It was fine, it wasn't real. In his head, it made sense: Kurt was going to be fine. Kurt was younger than him. Kurt _can't_ die. Teenagers don't do that.

When Kurt talks like that, when _Kurt_ can't even say it, Blaine knows. He's not strong enough for this.

Blaine leaves that night. He knows he won't be back, not for anybody.

Burt calls. He invites Blaine to the Bible Study. They're having a special prayer meeting for Kurt. Carole organized it. Finn's going to be there. So are all of Kurt's friends.

He can't do it. Not for anybody.

Blaine shows up fifteen minutes late. He doesn't pray, but he holds Kurt's hand the entire time.

Blaine goes to Kurt's every weekend. Kurt lies in bed a lot. They talk sometimes. Mostly though, they sing. Usually dirty songs. Apparently, Kurt really likes blowjob euphemisms. Blaine thinks its endearing.

"Can I ask you something?" Kurt asks. Blaine smiles at the sudden memory. He likes to remember when Kurt still looked alive: worried and hesitant and young and _glowing_.

"Sure." Blaine says.

"Do you remember that party? The one right after I joined the Warblers, at Michael's house?"

Blaine remembers. They'd both been drunk. Kurt had leaned over into him and whispered against his neck. His lips had burned against Blaine's skin. Blaine had reached out to touch Kurt, but his fingers had stopped just short of brushing along the silky fabric of Kurt's shirt. He was drunk, but Kurt had still seemed so untouchable. Too perfect to mess up and mark. Even though he'd wanted to. He'd wanted to drag Kurt down against him, touch and take and make Kurt go all breathy. Blaine loved that, the way Kurt's voice would puff out at the end, like he couldn't help it.

"Yeah." Blaine says, voice husky. "I remember."

"I kissed your neck." Kurt says. "You didn't do anything. I thought you didn't like me" He pauses.

"I thought you didn't want me."

Blaine doesn't know what to say. He wants to tell Kurt how everything was all confused. How they were both so stupid. Too cautious. It didn't matter then. Now, it seems pathetic and wasteful. So, so wasteful.

"I wanted you." Blaine says. It's enough

"Touch me." Kurt says.

"Now?" Blaine asks. "I don't want to hurt you."

Kurt laughs. "I'm not dying a virgin, Blaine." It's rude and inappropriate and demanding.

Blaine can't breathe, he's laughing so hard.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Blaine asks, but he's laughing. And maybe in love.

"I'm still a teenager," Kurt says haughtily. "and I still have needs."

Blaine doesn't know what this is anymore. It's absolutely ridiculous.

He crawls onto the bed and covers Kurt gently with his body.

"Please." Kurt says.

Blaine can't save Kurt, but he can give him this.

Burt finds out. He doesn't say it, but the way he looks at Blaine is unmistakable. Blaine wants to apologize, maybe. But he doesn't honestly feel remorse. He'd made Kurt feel good.

Burt seems to maybe see this. Because the look he gives Blaine isn't really angry. It's more resigned and maybe a little grateful and so, so _sad_.

Blaine realizes how selfish he is. He thinks of what he's losing.

Then, he thinks of what Burt is losing, what he's already lost.

If he can't look Burt in the eyes, it's not because he's ashamed.

It's because it _hurts_.

When Blaine comes over one weekend, Kurt falls asleep during his visit. It's not unusual. Kurt is getting weaker.

Blaine watches him for a moment. Kurt looks gone already. He doesn't have hair; it was lost with the chemotherapy. Kurt cried at that. He didn't flinch or complain about the muscle pain or the nausea or the dizzy spells, or the deep bone aches. But he cried about his hair. Before it was all gone, Blaine cut off a lock of it and put it in a card for Kurt to keep on his bedside table.

Kurt had called him creepy, compared him to Heathcliff. That had led to a three hour discussion about _Wuthering Heights_. It had been the best date Blaine had ever been on.

Now, with nothing else, Blaine moves to clean up Kurt's room. It's not really dirty. It's just something to do besides wait.

Blaine moves a pile of blankets. They'd been left on the floor. He and Kurt had been watching a movie. Suddenly, Kurt had had to run to the bathroom to throw up. Blaine had forgotten all about the mess.

Underneath the blankets, at the edge of the couch is a piece of paper.

Blaine tugs at it.

It's a card. The outside is plain and white.

Blaine huffs and opens it.

Kurt's handwriting is there. Unexpectedly sloppy, and overly curly. Tucked inside the card is a picture of his mom. It's not a good picture. Her mouth is wide open and she's about to shove a forkload of cake into it. Her hair is everywhere and her blue, blue eyes are staring at the camera, caught off guard and full of resentful fire for whoever snapped the candid photograph. He can see why it's Kurt's favorite.

Blaine reads the words Kurt has written. They're a jumble, a mess. Crowded together and scratched out, too short and rapid to make much of anything. It's just an outpouring, everything that Kurt doesn't say to him or his dad: snippets of things that he wants and wonders and feels, things too deep or wrong or selfish.

_Who will take care of dad? I don't want to leave. I never got out of here, never to New York. I would have been something. He kissed me. It's not fair. I have no one to remember me, like dad remembers you. _

And, directly underneath his mom's photograph,

_I'm scared. _

Blaine goes in the bathroom and locks the door. He sits on the toilet seat. His shirt is still tucked in, but his blazer is sitting on Kurt's bed. Somehow his shoes are untied.

He cries.

One morning, Kurt tells Blaine: "I can't sing anymore."

Blaine knows then, that it's over.

That afternoon, Kurt stops breathing.

They go to the hospital.

It won't make a difference.

Two days later, they're in the waiting room. Burt buys a fiber bar from the vending machine but he doesn't eat it. Blaine sips coffee from a Styrofoam cup. The brand is terrible, the beans are over roasted.

Finn is at school. Carole had work. Blaine hasn't been to any of his classes in a week.

There is a knock on the door. A nurse ducks in, her head hung low.

Burt makes a noise to his left. It sounds involuntary and strangled and wounded, wounded, wounded.

He goes over to stand in front of Burt. The man grabs his shoulders and looks up at him. Blaine says nothing and lets Burt shake him.

Somehow, he knows that it's job to do this. He loves Kurt. It's a realization, soft and sweet. Not an epiphany really, because it's not shocking, just nice to finally admit. Kind of like when he came out to his family, but so much better and so much more bitter and twisted and awful.

He never promised outright, but that doesn't matter. He'll take care of Burt because Kurt isn't here now and he needs somebody. He needs to help Burt through this, through all of it.

For the first time, Blaine doesn't want to run away.


End file.
